


the glory of the great dead

by mythicbeast



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-21
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 15:01:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythicbeast/pseuds/mythicbeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Offered the position of being the first Krogan Spectre, Grunt reflects on the human who made everything possible.</p><p>[vague spoilers for the ME3 ending; assumes Paragon!Shep and Control!Ending; plays fast and loose with canon]</p>
            </blockquote>





	the glory of the great dead

It's been fifty years to the day since the end of the Reaper War, and it's taken exactly  _that_  long for the new Council to get the new Citadel (which is how Grunt will always think of it, no matter what new names they come up with for it) up and running.   
  
 _About damn time_ , Grunt thinks, when the newsfeed about the Citadel's reconstruction shows up on his sand-blasted datapad. He doesn't think too much of it; even with the genophage cured and the mass relays patched together enough to make traveling from one system to another a little easier, there's a lot of work left to do on Tuchanka.   
  
What surprises him is the personal message that comes through from the Council, inviting him and Wrex to come to the Citadel's inauguration ceremony. When he looks at his clan leader, the older krogan just shrugs, absently detaching a squalling infant from his shoulder hump and passing it back to its mother.  
  
 _Could be the last time we get an **invitation** to Council space,_  Wrex snorts, shoulder bumping into Grunt's as he brushes past.  _Seeing the salarian councilor **trying**  to be polite to us should be a good show. Let's go._  
  
So they do.  
  
The new Citadel was impossible to perfectly recreate, even with the level of technology they have now, but they've come pretty close to what Grunt remembers. No one's seen the 'old' Citadel since it locked up tighter than a varren snout and went Void knows where, so -- as a quarian machinist explains, in an informational speech -- the engineers and architects relied on incomplete blueprint drafts and memory to piece it back together. It's a regular space station, this time, and not a mass relay. Grunt wishes he'd been here for  _that_  fight, to see Shepard take on a Reaper for the first time. By the way Wrex talks about it, it was as glorious as every other battle she'd taken him to.  
  
There are more people than they expected to see at the ceremony, and though Grunt sees a few familiar faces in the crowd, the Council takes him aside right after the inauguration is over. He's probably the first krogan to have an audience with the Council in person, instead of through a holo-vid. This close, he can  _smell_  the barely-concealed nervousness of the new Salarian councilor, but oddly enough she's the first one to speak, her back as stiff as her words.  
  
 _It is the decision of the Council that you be offered a position as a member of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel--_  
  
She doesn't get to finish her sentence before Grunt's laughter drowns her out, echoing around the empty chamber. It makes it sound like his ancestors are looking down at them and laughing with him. Maybe they're not the only ones laughing. He waits for the punchline to follow, because it's the funniest opening to a joke he's heard since they built a memorial to those who died in the Reaper War in the rubble on Earth, but it never comes.

Once he realizes they're serious and not actually pulling his quad, Grunt says yes.   
  
The resulting bureaucracy-induced headache makes him nearly take it back. He escapes, eventually, and ends up at a bar overlooking the Presidium. The place is called  _Normandy_ , which would make him laugh more if it didn't make his head hurt. The walls are decorated with surprisingly tasteful things related to the Normandy-- pictures of its crew, miniature scale models. Nothing overdone or tacky. He gets there early, so there aren't too many people around, but the bartender nearly drops the glass he's cleaning when Grunt slides onto a stool (titanium-reinforced, so it creaks but doesn't buckle under his weight) and orders a ryncol.  
  
It might have taken this long to build the hub of the galaxy again, but it would have taken even longer to rebuild without the Reapers helping piece things together.  _That's_  a sight Grunt knows he won't forget in a thousand years. If he's lucky enough to live that long.   
  
If it hadn't been for Shepard, he wouldn't be alive in the first place.   
  
The thought makes him slam down three drinks in a row, grimacing at the aftertaste. Even with a complete retrofit there  _still_  isn't a damn bar that can serve a glass of ryncol worth pyjak dung, and this one worse than most. But he didn't choose the bar for the quality of its alcohol: the Normandy's one and only asset, aside from its name, is its view.  
  
The statue in the middle of the Presidium is a new addition. He can see it clearly from here, now that it's been unveiled, a monument to all the forces of the galaxy that came together to stop the Reapers. Asari, quarian, salarian, turian, krogan. Even the geth get a place on the pedestal. The features on the figures are indistinct, keeping them from being recognized as individuals: all except one. Cast in cold metal, hand raised as though she might be in the middle of signaling the gathered army behind her to move out, Commander Shepard's unblinking eyes keep watch over the legacy she's left behind.  
  
Galactic peace. If someone had told Grunt fifty years ago that he could say those words and mean it, he'd have laughed in their face, then headbutted them hard enough to make their skull crack. He'd been so  _angry_ , then. Well, he's still angry  _now_ , but this time the anger and bloodlust are't what determine who he is.   
  
He has Shepard to thank for that too -- Grunt hadn't fully appreciated how difficult his own species was until he'd had to manage a pack of them on his own. He can't really guess how much of it was because Wrex actually thought he was useful, because he'd recognized that Grunt needed something to be responsible for instead of going crazy, or because he knew that being on a ship with Shepard would have taught Grunt how to think like no planetborn krogan would. Trying to figure it out makes Grunt's head hurt. Even if Wrex claims he doesn't do nearly as much thinking as the females, Grunt thinks he's more like Bakara than either of them can be bothered to admit.  
  
Grunt told Shepard he was just a soldier, once, and that she was his battlemaster to follow into whatever fight she chose. Even now, if she ever comes back from the dead, he'll follow her, no questions asked. For a human female, she had the biggest quads out of any soldier he'd ever met. You don't have to be a krogan to respect that. But he wonders what she'd think of him now, getting offered a position like this. She was the first Spectre for  _her_  species, but the circumstances had been a little more desperate. Still, she'd try her best to help. She always did.The thing about Shepard that most people don't get -- don't  _really_  get -- is that she didn't just bust heads and shoot at anyone stupid enough to get on her bad side. She actually  _cared_  about things. Like giving people second chances. Setting things right.  
  
Helping a tank-bred krogan figure out his purpose in life.  
  
Try as he might to imagine it, he can't say what she'd make of this new development. Even if Shepard had his back, he doesn't think even the  _krogan_  can imagine one of their kind becoming a Spectre. Not for at least another thousand years, anyway, after the rest of the galaxy finally convinces itself that another Krogan Rebellion isn't on its way. Humans might be new to galactic space, but all the stories they'd been told would have given them no reason to trust the krogan. If he'd been in Shepard's place, would he have taken the same chances?  
  
Probably not, Grunt decides, but that was what made Shepard who she was. Let the other clans say that having a human female for his battlemaster made him weak: Shepard taught him that even kindness could be strength.  
  
He runs a hand over the spikes on his head, where the plates have finally fused together and begun to rise in a spiky mass. It's not as impressive as Wrex's, not yet, but he's willing to bet that he'll outgrow the leader of Clan Urdnot in a few centuries. Too bad his battlemaster won't be around to see it; even  _if_  she had survived the Reaper War, humans only live a fraction of krogan lives.   
  
But once they got to the other side, well... that's a different story entirely. Silently, Grunt raises his glass.  
  
 _Here's to you, battlemaster. I'll see you in the Void where all the good soldiers go..._  
  
He grins, toothily.  
  
 _... But not until I become the best damn Spectre this galaxy's ever seen._

**Author's Note:**

> the original prompt on the ME kink meme:
> 
> "After the reaper threat is gone, the Krogan race gains power and influence under Urdnot rule. Grunt's a little older, somehow stronger and braver, his scales are coming in and he's the cat's meow in Tuchanka. The council offers Grunt the position of becoming the first Krogan Spectre. Obviously, he's initially pleased but after the thrill and rush is gone, Grunt is thinking about what made it possible. About the person who took a chance on an unknown and unfroze him, the person he looked to first when he didn't understand what it was like to be a Krogan, the person who stood up for him and became his Krantt, his battlemaster. Shepard is gone now (Maybe alive but they're apart physically or dead) and Grunt takes a quiet moment to reflect on his life and the unknowns that Shepard chanced on, and whether or not he would make his battlemaster proud."
> 
> The title is from the last couple of verses of The Hávamál (http://www.simnet.is/gardarj/havamal.htm):
> 
> "Cattle die, kindred die,  
> Every man is mortal:  
> But the good name never dies  
> Of one who has done well.
> 
> Cattle die, kindred die,  
> Every man is mortal:  
> But I know one thing that never dies,  
> The glory of the great dead."
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
